Corruption and Construction

The Sunday Times had a great article that says almost exactly what I was thinking-

Highlights-
'The fact is the dollars involved in the construction industry are so great and the opportunities at so many levels for corruption are so broad that this is a problem that will never, ever go away,'' he said.[Robert D. Luskin, a former federal organized crime prosecutor who is special counsel to the Laborers' International Union of North America].

Gordon S. Heddell, the inspector general for the United States Labor Department, said-"Organized crime is like a cancer. Sometimes we treat it and beat it, but sometimes new forms emerge.''

There is a Daily News article that is also great, but totally packed, called "Extreme Makeover, Now," (couldn't link to it, sorry). It takes a less dire view of the unions' role in construction corruption. It also mentions the Brian Kates series in the Daily News which is useful but also very dense. More importantly it makes some of the key points I had hoped to verify, such as the fact that the code was known to not be up to speed nor enforceable by the department of buildings due to the building boom, and the importance of the role of unions (whatever it may be) in this debacle.

I now need to:

1. Follow up on the changes in enforcement not just the code in the wake of [Dept of Building's head] Lancaster's getting lambasted by the Daily News
   
2. Talk to unions

But this has made me more interested in the duality of the nature of unions and how they protect and workers as well as help enforce codes in some ways when they are working correctly and how they are so difficult to control and open to corrupt leadership on the other hand. I think my research should look more at this in the future.